Australian Story

His Hour Upon the Stage - Transcript

PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT: Monday, 9 October , 2006

PROF. MARIE BASHIR, PRESENTER: Hello. I'm Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales. Tonight's Australian Story is about a young man whom I've come to know well and, like many of his friends, feel uplifted by his attitude to life. As viewers would have seen last week, Aaron McMillan overcame a dramatic health crisis, his future looked good. But as it turned out he would require plenty of the passion and resilience for which he is famous, and that I find quite inspiring.

LAST WEEK

AARON McMILLAN: And she got the X-ray scans out and she stuck them up on the white wall. And my grandparents and her and I looked at one of the biggest tumours that's ever been found in a living person.

GALE PUCKETT, MOTHER: The doctor told us that he only had three to six weeks to go. His brain had compensated for the growth of this tumour to the extent that really he only had three to six weeks left.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON: I know it's going to be difficult and I know the stakes are very high.

AARON McMILLAN: My great hope is that I either come back totally with it or don't come back at all.

DR DAVID KADRIAN, REGISTRAR: His prognosis at the moment is things are looking very grim. In fact, in that context he's asked me to go and speak with Aaron's mother just recently and warn her that things aren't going well.

PETER CRISP, FRIEND: Tonight we actually see a miracle. Very fortunately, Aaron has come through his surgery unscathed.

HIS HOUR UPON THE STAGE

AARON McMILLAN: When I first came out of the operation there was this amazing positivity that I had survived and it was over. I mean, we knew there was always a threat that it could come back but it felt as though I was off the hook in the most amazing circumstances.

GALE PUCKETT, MOTHER: He had regular scans after the operation. They showed that the tumour had gone, that there was only scar tissue remaining. The 16th August, 2003 he started to have problems, and that was, like exactly two years to the day of the operation. And the problems were with his neck.

AARON McMILLAN: Basically, the pain would not go away, like, the weeks rolled on and it became months. And I did X-rays and various scans but they couldn't see a thing. And suddenly Charlie Teo was ringing me on the phone and he said, "Look, you've got to bring those scans in. I've got to have a look at them right now." And, yeah, my heart really sank because I thought, "Oh, God, here we go again." And, you know, he sat there looking through them, looking through them. And then suddenly he just swore out, you know, and he said, "Yeah, it looks like tumour, you know." It was a tumour at the back of the neck about the size of a squashed cherry, he said, right at the base of my skull. It was sort of like, oh OK, the joke's over. Back to the reality that I did have a really serious cancer in me and it's still there.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON: Oh, I was pretty devastated. I felt like I had failed him. I felt like we'd lost already. So I was pretty despondent for a while there.

AARON McMILLAN: And Dr Teo said to me, very disturbingly, he said, "I've got to go and find out whether anyone has survived a recurrence of this type. You know, and that was a pretty stressful thing to hear. And, unfortunately, they found four other tumours as well of the same type, one in my rib, two in my spine and one in my hip. And he said that he had found some good results of this type of tumour recurring and being treated by radiotherapy. With five tumours spread through me it's likely that the problem is not going to be solved through surgery.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON: Now, the odd thing about Aaron's brain tumour is that it still hasn't recurred in his brain. And that means that it had probably already spread by the time we operated on him three years ago. So his fate was almost sealed right from the very start.

AARON McMILLAN: The prognosis is that I have somewhere between 12 weeks and 25-plus years to live. Charlie Teo found evidence of one particular person surviving this exact recurrence for 26 years. Dr Smee is the radiotherapist and he wasn't as optimistic.

DR ROBERT SMEE, RADIATION ONCOLOGIST: Worst-case scenario is that in the next month, two months, more areas become apparent and then more areas and then more areas. Can he be cured? No, he can't be cured by any means I have available to me. Well, Aaron asked me point-blank do I believe he's still going to be alive in five years? And my answer to him was 'no'.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON: Oh, there's definitely hope, there's definitely hope. And, I mean, you know, we have to be realistic and we have to know the figures and the fact that this might come back and spread throughout his body and kill him within the next year or two, but there is definite hope that he could beat this and survive many, many years and die of old age.

GALE PUCKETT, MOTHER: Well, I felt it very unfair. It does seem to me like something was happening that shouldn't be happening, that it was all coming up to close and too soon and too fast. And is there an end in sight and is there a cure? Or is it going to be a progressive thing that will sort of end in deterioration and, well, who knows, you know?

AARON McMILLAN: Yeah, I think people often advise me to take it easy and to relax and to sit back and let life happen to you. But I just cannot accept that, I have to live my life in fast forward and I have to pursue things as directly as I can. So I'm going to go berserk with positivity. I'm certainly not going to sit around and just wait to die. My main focus now in life is to become the best creative musician that I can be. I like to fulfil all of the concerts that I've been asked to play at, and even though I'm not feeling that well at the moment and I didn't have the best news the other day - it set me back a little bit mentally, I guess, because five bone tumours seems to have become seven. It's not going to be a big virtuosic program but it's just going to be the best that I can do and I'll have a chat to the audience and just try to have some fun and hope I don't end up on the floor. I was diagnosed with the recurring bone cancer in January, and this is the first performance I've given since that diagnosis. I think positivity, positive thinking and being in the right frame of mind, is the key to fighting this illness, you know. It goes beyond medical science.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON: Look, I've been in the game now long enough to have seen thousands of patients with brain tumours and to have operated on thousands of patients, and my personal opinion is that a positive attitude has a very, very important impact on survival, probably as important as some of the medications and treatments that we give people with cancer.

AARON McMILLAN (ON STAGE): There's one thing I'd like to say. The doctors said about three months ago that I could only have 12 weeks to live. So, this week is the 13th week... and I'm not going anywhere!

DR ROBERT SMEE, RADIATION ONCOLOGIST: Aaron is very positive about his condition. There are many patients who have this positive zeal and who say, "I can, by being positive, cure my cancer." I've not yet met anyone, over many years of practice, in which that's ultimately been cured by that approach. There's a difference about Aaron today. He's scared. Unfortunately, the problem is that Aaron has recurrence of this cancer. There are now multiple lumps all within the same area. My concern is that these have grown, and my belief is it will continue to grow.

AARON McMILLAN: Yeah, I guess the advice has been conflicting. Yeah, Charlie was really positive. He said, "Look, don't worry. It's only small. You keep fighting, keep doing the things you're doing and meditate." Yeah, well, Dr Smee suggested, with the new brain tumour, that I should have radiation on the brain, and having radiation on the middle of the brain is quite a dramatic decision to make, so I chose to wait for three months and to have another brain scan and to get a real idea then of how fast the tumour's growing, if it's growing much at all.

DR ROBERT SMEE, RADIATION ONCOLOGIST: Well, I think he should have radiotherapy sooner rather than later. I think to wait runs the risk that he's going to end up with significant deficit and that this concert in eight weeks, seven weeks may not take place to the same extent that he would like it to be.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: I just popped upstairs to see Aaron - I'm the neighbour that lives downstairs - and he just shouted from the bathroom, "Just hang on a minute. Something terrible's just happened." So I waited at the door, and he came to the door absolutely doubled over in agony, saying that he felt that he'd cracked a rib across his sternum.

AARON McMILLAN: I'm supposed to be giving a concert at my school, my old school, and the concert is to start a scholarship that's being named after me.

AARON McMILLAN (ON PHONE): I definitely can't perform tonight. I don't know what's happening. I just want to try and get someone to play on my behalf, 'cause there's a couple of hundred people, and I don't want to let them down.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: So, we weren't expecting this little surprise this afternoon, and now that it's twenty to four, we're into operation overdrive.

AARON MCMILLAN (ON PHONE): I'm about to take a really strong painkiller, and if I can just travel there and be there, you know, I think I should be able to do that.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: Given the situation he was in earlier today, I mean, you'd nearly want to have had a small miracle to happen to see him perform tonight. And he came through. I just can't believe it. Here he goes again! He was as white as a ghost. He was sweating like somebody who'd overdosed on painkillers, because he probably had.

AARON MCMILLAN: I really believe that when you have cancer, there's only so long you can spend in between fully recovering or dying. Eventually you have to go one of those two ways. Eventually you're going to die from cancer or you're going to recover from cancer, and there's only a very limited amount of time that you can spend in the middle. I'm working very hard towards my third Opera House concert, so I'm very excited about that.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: Aaron acknowledging how sick he is, is like trying to pull blood out of a turnip. I think what he's taken on himself, to produce, promote, publicise, sell, perform at this stage of his cancer - I mean, I just think he's either completely stupid or he's absolutely unbelievable. I mean, he's both.

AARON MCMILLAN: In the broader sense, music has been a big reason why I've survived cancer so well to this point. The actual day-to-day practicalities of putting a concert together is not conducive to good health. Oh, it was a bit of a shock today because they did some scans, and it turns out that a new cancer has...has sort of eaten its way into 80% of my spinal cord, and I had no idea about it. And they said that I was... You know, really, they just caught me in time from becoming a paraplegic, so it's just all a bit too much. It's just all too much. I can't believe it. So, I'm in total shock tonight. And it's only about...four nights until my Opera House concert, so...what next, you know?

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: Last night he was discharged from hospital for a few hours to actually see if he could sit at the piano and have the strength to actually play. And he just pressed down on the keys, four notes perhaps, maximum, and then his arms just collapsed on his lap. And he just looked at me and went, "I'm sorry, I just can't do it." And sadly he's not able to perform tonight.

AARON MCMILLAN: Very, very disappointing, but I've got some wonderful musicians who are going to play in my stead. The concert's important because it's really the highlight of my year and it's been a great source of inspiration for me.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: I think he thinks it's his last concert. And I think he's really disappointed that he is not able to play the whole program. It really, really, really means everything to him to get on that stage. It's his life, it's what's keeping him alive.

AARON MCMILLAN: I guess there’s a feeling of lack that I can't actually get out there and perform. But it's a wonderful night, everyone's having a lovely time, and the point that is we're creating music and we're bringing music to an audience, and that's something special. After the concert I had to go back to Prince of Wales Hospital as an in-patient and go back onto the ward, and it was a very, very, very strange way to finish such a big, successful public evening, to end up back in the hospital ward again, sleeping. And the reality hit in that I was still a long way from out of the woods with this.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON (IN OFFICE): You know, I was kind of preparing to give you this big talk about death and dying today.

AARON MCMILLAN (IN OFFICE): No, you weren't!

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON (IN OFFICE): I was, because you told me! Well you rang me up and said the scan looked bad.

DR CHARLIE TEO, NEUROSURGEON: The future is unknown, unfortunately. I mean, he could well die from the cancer. And in fact the majority of people do. But there are also people who survive it, and hopefully he will be one of them.

PETER CRISP, FRIEND: Today is the launching of the Aaron McMillan Grove for Medical Research, which the Governor of NSW has very kindly made herself available to come here and launch that as being patron to the Cure for Life Foundation. So the idea is to donate a tree for $55, and four-fifths of that donation goes to medical research and one-fifth goes towards the planting of the tree and the maintenance of the tree. And we would hope that in 100 years time that they’ll still be here.

AARON MCMILLAN: I didn't know it at the time, but the small performance that I gave down at Yass was actually the last performance that I was to give as a concert pianist.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: Ninety per cent of me thinks that he is going to get through this but there are times and there are days where I see the sadness in his eyes, and I see this defeat starting to take over. But as it sits right now, I'm no miracle worker, but that's really what I hope would happen now, is we would have a miracle, and, I mean, some divine intervention would be what I see is what's needed right now.

GALE PUCKETT, MOTHER: One afternoon, the pain management doctor who we'd seen a couple of weeks prior actually said something to the effect that three months is probably all you're going to get, and that absolutely did shock us. Yes, there may be a bit of denial there, but at the same time I still think that while Aaron is with us then the best feeling to cultivate is one of positivity and one of hope, because these predictions of time limits have been given to Aaron before and he has proved them wrong in the past.

AARON MCMILLAN: I'd always been warned that if the cancer spread into my spine it could affect walking. Just a few months ago I was walking around the city, I was picking up my mail, and now, a few months later, I can barely walk. I've always had this funny belief that somehow I might just sneak through this. I don't know how and I may well not. But the cancer does seem to be encroaching, you know, it does seem to be spreading. When I realised that the piano playing was going to have to be gracefully retired, I instantly turned to another great love of mine, which is composing. And I decided that I'd set myself the task of writing a full-scale piano concerto.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: He still operates as if he's got a full-time job, and he's doing that even with this horrendous illness. So for all the lazybones out there, I mean, he is an absolute inspiration. To anyone who is having a bad hair day or having a you know, having a day where they're feeling a little bit lacking in motivation - my God, Aaron has never once lacked motivation.

AARON MCMILLAN: My mother came up with a really great idea to help everything run a bit more smoothly in the situation I'm in - I can't walk anymore. I've got a lot of fantastic friends, and she thought about asking them to come over and visit me every fortnight and bring a dinner over to help me. Yeah, I've reached a real important turning point in dealing with this illness. If I've only got three, six months left to live, then so be it. I've been able to find a real peace with this, I've been able to find a real peace with the fact that I might not live that much longer, but I do have to accept it and it’s you know, death is a part of life.

ROSELLE WILSON, FRIEND: Now I would say to you it's minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. When I go to sleep I often wonder, "Whoa, will he be there in the morning?"

AARON MCMILLAN: I've come to the conclusion that as long as I'm working on the things that I believe in, and working toward goals that I think are really important, then I'm happy to accept when my time comes. And there's a great comfort that I get from being able to accept that death will come to me when it's meant to.